In and of himself, there’s nothing with Floyd. But as a headliner, he lacks a bit of oomph. The Braves fell short in the first round of the playoffs yet again last year, and Braves fans were understandably hoping that the front office would make a splash in the offseason. Instead, they traded for a perfectly, precisely league average guy coming off Tommy John surgery. Remember, the last time that they traded a TJ guy to a team in Chicago, they sent Arodys Vizcaino over, and he had so many complications that he had to have another surgery; he still hasn’t pitched since the trade occurred, two and a half years ago.

How average is Gavin Floyd? High Heat Stats put it this way:

Gavin Floyd–the most average pitcher of our generation.
He has a 70-70 career record, 100 ERA+, and has allowed 1150 hits in 1151 innings.

In fact, Floyd has been better than that since becoming a full-time starting pitcher in 2008, after four years of struggling to establish himself in a rotation. Since 2008, he has the following line:

W-L

IP

K/9

BB/9

SO/BB

HR/9

ERA

ERA+

FIP

xFIP

FIP-

WHIP

62-60

972.2

7.21

2.84

2.54

1.05

4.15

107

4.07

3.96

93

1.28

That K/BB number is quite creditable, and as you can see from his ERA+ and FIP-, he has been solidly above-average since becoming a full-time starting pitcher, notwithstanding the 24 1/3 poor innings he tossed last year before going under the knife.

In fact, over the past years, Floyd’s performance has been virtually indistinguishable from that of John Danks, who is in the middle of a five year, $65 million deal and will earn $14.25 million this year. We got Floyd for a third of the price of Danks, and if he earns all of his performance incentives he’ll still only cost about half as much as Danks.

Name

W

L

GS

IP

K/9

BB/9

HR/9

ERA

FIP

xFIP

WAR

Gavin Floyd

62

60

158

972.2

7.21

2.84

1.05

4.15

4.07

3.96

16.1

John Danks

55

61

155

970.2

6.71

2.74

1.07

4.01

4.12

4.08

15.9

It does bear mentioning that Danks has had markedly worse performance over the last three seasons than he did over the first three: 3.61 ERA, 125 ERA+ in 608 1/3 IP from 2008-2010, followed by 4.69 ERA, 92 ERA+ in 362 1/3 injury-plagued innings from 2011-2013. Floyd’s performance gap is not quite as wide: 3.99 ERA, 113 ERA+ in 586 2/3 innings from 2008-2010, 4.38 ERA, 98 ERA+ in 386 injury-plagued innings from 2011-2013.

Like Danks, Floyd is a former first-round pick. Floyd taken fourth overall in 2001 by Philadelphia. Danks was taken 9th overall in 2003 by Texas. Each was selected one pick after a pitcher who wound up having a worse career: the third overall pick in 2001 was Dewon Brazelton, and the 8th overall pick in 2003 was Paul Maholm.

As fate would have it, the player selected after Floyd in the draft was a childhood friend of his older brother, who went to the same high school, Mt. St. Joseph in Baltimore: Mark Teixeira. (Floyd was drafted straight out of high school; Texeira is three years older, and was drafted out of Georgia Tech.)

Floyd did reasonably well in the minor leagues, but he didn’t blow hitters away. His minor league numbers are not much different than his major league numbers: 812 2/3 innings, 45-43 record, 3.69 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 7.1 K/9, 2.13 K/BB. Though he spent two and a half years at the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, he was never able to dominate minor league hitters.

Finally, in 2006, the Phillies traded Floyd along with Gio Gonzalez to get Freddy Garcia, a horrible move. While Garcia only pitched 58 innings before leaving in free agency, Gio was traded for Nick Swisher, and Floyd became a rotation mainstay for the Sox. After a good year in Triple-A in the White Sox system in 2007, Floyd finally broke out, winning 17 games in 2008. He’s been in the rotation ever since.

He’s got a fastball in the lower 90s and a hard curveball he throws in the low 80s, and since he’s a White Sox pitcher, he also has a cutter that he throws a lot. (Don Cooper, the longtime White Sox pitching coach, is well-known for favoring the cutter.)

He doesn’t strike out a ton of guys, as his major league K/9 is equal to his minor league K/9 of 7.1. There isn’t anything that he does brilliantly. He’s basically the epitome of a league-average innings eater, except that he’s coming back from Tommy John surgery, which means that the Braves won’t be able to rely on him to eat innings immediately. Howard Bender of Fangraphs suggests that the Braves are stashing him for second-half depth:

You almost have to cast aside the entire first half of the season and hope that he comes back strong after the All Star break.

Perhaps that’s actually the plan for the Braves overall. By the time Floyd can be trusted on the mound, Wood will have his innings capped and rather than go out onto the trade market for a starter, the team will already have a veteran arm in-house.

I think that’s about right, except that I see the glass as half full. It is exceptionally hard to find an extra league-average starter when you don’t have one waiting in the wings, as the Braves discovered in 2007, the nightmare year that they gave 96 starts to Buddy Carlyle, Kyle Davies, Jo-Jo Reyes, Lance Cormier, Mark Redman, Anthony Lerew, and Jeff Bennett. Depth is something you don’t realize you need till it’s gone.

That’s what Floyd is: depth. And that’s how he’s being paid, since his $4 million salary means he’s being paid more like a bullpen arm than a starting pitcher. If Frank Wren doesn’t make any bigger acquisitions than Floyd, then fans will have a right to feel disappointed about the offseason. But they shouldn’t be disappointed about Floyd himself.

True, although I cannot imagine where we can get better except through players already in the system. Nobody wants Uggla; there are no true aces available that we can afford in money or prospects, and BJ looks like he’s going to be with us for the length of the contract.

Maybe we would be better with Headley than CJ, but I’m not sure we can afford what the Padres would want. All in all, we have a good lineup, rotation and pen; and our bench is better than I’d hoped.

6: I agree. This is a team with a lot of room for improvement on the roster—a full season of Heyward, more innings from Wood, a rebound from Upton (even if he’s bad, being that bad is unlikely), and substitution of La Stella for Uggla. Wren is in the fortunate position of not needing to make a move to keep his team in good position to win the East again.

I think it is fair to assume that conversations have taken place between Wren and the agents for Hayward, Freeman, and probably others. Those conversations probably went like this:

Wren: “Hey, we’d really love to sign [your player] to a long-term deal. We were hoping he’d sign for not a lot of money.”
Agent: “Great! He loves Atlanta and would love to stay here. But he’s a really good player. He’d like a lot of money.”
Wren: “I see. That’s a shame.”

@csg
Why would that mean last offseason. The quote was discussing the players who have stood out over the course of the last 2 years, not 2 years ago. I’m either confused by your comment or fuzzy due to excess Christmas refreshments! Why do you think that tweet means last year?

The way I read that – the Braves made inquiries the past two years with Freeman and Heyward. They understood then that it would take a huge overpay to get it done and haven’t attempted it again this offseason. You may be right and maybe I read it wrong.

I’m unsure why the obsession with this. Whether Wren asked this offseason or not, it’s not gonna happen because they’re both gonna want too much, especially given the market. I’m sure if something changes for one side, they know to call the other. It doesn’t require that Wren ask for weekly updates.

Nick, listen, I agree with you. We are simply having a discussion and I’m responding to other posts in this thread. It’s not an obsession. It’s fans who are bored with our offseason, or lack thereof, activity. Wren and the market haven’t provided us with any other talking points.

I’m defining “too much” as “more than we are willing to pay right now.” I didn’t mean it as a criticism of how much Heyward and Freeman are/would be asking for.

If I were injecting my own opinion into it, I’d define “too much” as “enough money that it makes more sense just to wait and deal with it during free agency and/or when free agency is only a year away.” I believe they’re probably asking “too much” by that definition, too.

Incidentally, if I could sum up the recent general team-building philosophy on this board and perhaps oversimplify it, it would be thus: The second a player becomes eligible for arbitration, he should be immediately signed to a long-term extension or traded for prospects. I find this to be a silly philosophy.

People seem pretty keen on extending Andrelton ASAP. And maybe I’m misreading things, but I don’t know that absolutely everyone is psyched about buying out a FA year or two of Heyward’s, at market prices. Which I understand.

That’s exactly the point. These players are always going to cost more than the Braves are willing to pay-absent some unlikely to desire to give a hometown discount-so there is no point lamenting that the Braves aren’t extending them. You simply have to accept that Liberty Media prefers to let top-flight players leave and try to replace them from the system. Whether or not these players “deserve” a certain amount is irrelevant because the Braves are not going to pay it.

In any event, I’m not convinced that Heyward, at least, has justified the kind of contract that people think he will get. Maybe he will but, given that free agents usually end up getting paid based on past performance rather than future production, I’m not so sure that it makes sense to pay based on forecasting what he might produce in the future rather than waiting to see what he actually produces.

He played on those great Orioles teams that won 2 WS, 4 pennants & 5 division titles between 1966 & 1974. I was pretty young, but the O’s were on the Game of the Week pretty often & they were in the post-season a lot back then, and I remember Blair playing pretty shallow & running down everything. (Sound familiar?)

If you let Teheran eat innings the first few months and stick with the plan to provide an extra day of rest whenever possible, you're less likely to end up in a position where you may need to limit the younger arms down the stretch